Cross-sector collaboration to fight the obesity epidemic.

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Provides insight into why we need to get out of our silos to address the complex problems of obesity and chronic disease prevention. Video features brief interviews with some of the participants in a recent workshop from the Building Trust Initiative (Feb 9-10, 2011, King City, Ontario).

Following the third meeting, where participants expressed support for opening the dialogue to a broader audience, the first public workshop on building trust was organized as part of the Canadian Obesity Network’s National Obesity Summit 2011. Close to 50 people took part in a three hour workshop which was structured to engage participants in a reflection on the similarities and differences between sectors with regards to respective paradigms or deepest held beliefs.

The third trust-building workshop focused on exploring the possibilities and parameters for more and better inter/ multi-sectoral partnerships and avenues for moving forward with concrete initiatives that both build trust and improve individual and collective efforts to address the problems. The meeting also explored the level of commitment for an ongoing effort under the banner of the Building Trust Initiative.

The second trust-building workshop progressed from the inaugural meeting with a focus on building “authentic trust” – a form of trust that involves conscious choice and that can be built from a foundation of mistrust through commitment to establishing a continuous relationship. As explored in this meeting, authentic trust is believed to create new opportunities and unforeseen relationships, essentially acting like a foundation for cross-sector collaboration deemed necessary to solve complex social problems like obesity and chronic diseases.

This inaugural trust-building workshop was conceptualized following a meeting organized three years earlier by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes, and Concerned Children’s Advertisers. In this meeting, which explored how to foster multi-sectoral collaboration on obesity-related research, the lack of trust among sectors emerged as a major obstacle to collaboration. Hence, the Building Trust Initiative to Address the Epidemic of Obesity and Chronic Diseases took root in November 2008.